In a rare partnership, Apple allowed BridgeCo a glimpse at its code in order to open up AirPlay streaming media integration to third-party devices.

BridgeCo, a software company that embeds chips for streaming media, gained unprecedented access to Apple's in-development AirPlay technology as a trusted partner, according to a new report by CNBC.

Prior to the partnership, Apple had never "opened up their eco-system," said BridgeCo CEO Gene Sheridan. "We've always been knocking on the door to work with them on this."

The El Segundo, Calif., company had worked with Apple before on iPod dock products, but a year ago, Apple invited BridgeCo to work with them even more closely as a launch partner for AirPlay, Apple's new wireless media streaming technology.

Sheridan and his team were given a rare opportunity to look at Apple's code. "There is a magic to Apple that sounds simple," he said. "They know how to take a complex and feature-rich technology and narrow it."

Afterward, BridgeCo sent Apple a "long list" of what it had to offer. The Cupertino, Calif., company chose three items.

The first stereo equipment with BridgeCo's new JukeBlox software, which will allow users to take advantage of AirPlay and "mix and match" equipment, should be out by the holidays.

BridgeCo isn't profitable yet, but the Apple partnership could quickly turn things around. According to the report, the deal could provide as much as "half the company's revenues."

On its website, Apple promotes Denon, Marantz, Bowers&Wilkins, JBL, and iHome as "featured partners" of AirPlay. Of these brands, only Denon is cross-listed on the BridgeCo website as a "Top Brand Connecting with BridgeCo."

At the Sep. 1 media event, Apple CEO Steve Jobs demoed the AirPlay technology by streaming the movie "Up" directly from an iPad running iOS 4.2 to the new AppleTV over Wi-Fi. Full AirPlay media streaming from iOS devices should be available through iOS 4.2 in November.

I'm sorry, it's late and I may have missed it- just what is bridgeco bringing to the table? What 3 things? How are they ensuring airplay is update proof to 3rd party products? Is airplay an open standard? Meh, maybe I'll figure it out in the morning, sorry for the wasted post.

Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster by your side, kid.

This can be absolutely huge! It would be fantastic if Apple allows third parties to tie their hardware into Airplay. This could be Sonos for the rest of us ... But really, if there are sound boxes with integrated Airplay that you just plug into a socket somewhere in you flat and can then stream music to it from any iDevice you want, even your friends, this would be fantastic!

I'm sorry, it's late and I may have missed it- just what is bridgeco bringing to the table? What 3 things? How are they ensuring airplay is update proof to 3rd party products? Is airplay an open standard? Meh, maybe I'll figure it out in the morning, sorry for the wasted post.

As far as I can tell, BridgeCo built JukeBlox, a "connectivity platform," that they're offering to manufacturers to help them enable AirPlay in their consumer entertainment devices.

Since BridgeCo has Apple's "blessing," their chips and software should have a tight integration with AirPlay and iTunes.

Sheridan and his team were given a rare opportunity to look at Apple's code. "There is a magic to Apple that sounds simple," he said. "They know how to take a complex and feature-rich technology and narrow it."

AirPlay is the most intrigue feature demonstrated a week ago. It'll allow iDevices to act like a portable movie & music server, right there in your hands. The only shortcoming I found is you need to play the content first before you airplay it. If you could just select a song or a video and airplay it directly it would be golden.

So does anyone know of a connection between this bridgeco and sonos? Will airplay stream different feeds of music/video/internet radio to different plagers from one central server (be it a Mac or a true media/iTunes server?

This would be a great technology if it truly will allow different companies coming out with a range (price/quality) of audio/video playback.

As a sidenote, I hope Apple is working on a true international roll out of iTunes content (tv series and movies are still non existant in european stores). Apple we are really buying Ã* lot of your stuff lately!

I think I understand the benefits of AirPlay, streaming locally in your house. However, Simplify Media use to stream in your house & to the world via the net, including music, photos & other media. Granted, at the time, it was only one way streaming from your computer. The home computer app was free & you paid $2.99 for the iPhone app.

Google bought the Simplify Media company to stream music to the Androids, & shut off the servers to the paid-for Mac streaming(Google's version of business integrity & ethics). What would prevent Google from buying Bridgeco to do the same thing again? Given history, I am surprised that Apple didn't buy this company to prevent such a happening from taking place, & maybe they tried. I would hate to see large sums of $ invested into AirPlay gadgets, only to have Google buy the company (& the intellectual property rights), which would block any hardware upgrades to match Apples' evolving technology. I'm sure Apple knows what they are doing & would leave us hanging.

I don't see how Apple can lose intellectual property rights to their own intellectual property? Also, google try to buy this company and i guess Apple can always outbid them. I think a third party company is being used to help adoption of the technology, not to manage it in any way...

I don't see how Apple can lose intellectual property rights to their own intellectual property? Also, google try to buy this company and i guess Apple can always outbid them. I think a third party company is being used to help adoption of the technology, not to manage it in any way...

The agreements to use Airplay technology are probably done by license. Apple still owns intellectual property rights to Airplay no matter who owns the other company. Should one of these speaker companies be bought out, Apple can just tweak Airplay after terminating the license agreement. At no point could Google use any of Apples code unless they really wanted to get sued and loose.

When you acquire a company you get their IP, not the IP of their partners.

IMHO Apple should have simply bought this company and its talent and engineering assets and provided the Hi Fi companies with the chips directly. As it is I fear this will end up as a company bought by Google or MS or other perpetual Apple copycats. Even copyright isn't safe when people have detailed knowledge, witness Android and Palm OS, nothing more than reworks of Apple technology that seem to have circumvented the law.

From Apple ][ - to new Mac Pro I've owned them all.Long on AAPL so biased"Google doesn't sell you anything, Google just sells you!"

The agreements to use Airplay technology are probably done by license. Apple still owns intellectual property rights to Airplay no matter who owns the other company. Should one of these speaker companies be bought out, Apple can just tweak Airplay after terminating the license agreement. At no point could Google use any of Apple’s code unless they really wanted to get sued and loose.

When you acquire a company you get their IP, not the IP of their partners.

Tell Eric Schmidt and Jon Rubinstein this! Seems to me these bozos managed to transfer something to their respective companies that they 'acquired' at Apple, if not actual code then concepts and at least some pretty damn good inside knowledge.

I truly hope you are correct.

From Apple ][ - to new Mac Pro I've owned them all.Long on AAPL so biased"Google doesn't sell you anything, Google just sells you!"

I think what this likely is is the first FairPlay license Apple has ever given. Streaming non-DRM content has been done. But this is the first time Apple is letting a 3rd party playback iTunes Store DRM content. So BridgeCo's software is mostly likely an implementation of FairPlay which can then be integrated into other products.

Tell Eric Schmidt and Jon Rubinstein this! Seems to me these bozos managed to transfer something to their respective companies that they 'acquired' at Apple, if not actual code then concepts and at least some pretty damn good inside knowledge.

I truly hope you are correct.

Unless you can back that up with actual facts - it should be pretty easy to do. Companies rarely steal code and get away with it - it's really easy to find out. The best example was when Microsoft Media Player was caught having Apple's quicktime code verbatum in there. Apple called MS on it heavily in court and used that as a wedge to get MS to commit to office development.

Insider knowledge is completely different from intellectual property by the way. And that has never been proven at all either. There have been allegations, but anybody can throw those around.

Even copyright isn't safe when people have detailed knowledge, witness Android and Palm OS, nothing more than reworks of Apple technology that seem to have circumvented the law.

Seem to have and have are two very different things. If I walk out of a bank with tons of money that I did not walk in with, you can say that it seems like I robbed the place when in fact I did no such thing.

Creating a rip-off is not in of itself illegal - only a court of law can determine that and no court has done so.

Unless you can back that up with actual facts - it should be pretty easy to do. Companies rarely steal code and get away with it - it's really easy to find out. The best example was when Microsoft Media Player was caught having Apple's quicktime code verbatum in there. Apple called MS on it heavily in court and used that as a wedge to get MS to commit to office development.

Insider knowledge is completely different from intellectual property by the way. And that has never been proven at all either. There have been allegations, but anybody can throw those around.

when something is pretty damn evident, it rarely needs to be proven. IP converges with IK.
Just because a court of law hasn't proved or disproved anything, doesn't mean we can't have very justified suspicions that verge on certainties sometimes.

Seem to have and have are two very different things. If I walk out of a bank with tons of money that I did not walk in with, you can say that it seems like I robbed the place when in fact I did no such thing.

Creating a rip-off is not in of itself illegal - only a court of law can determine that and no court has done so.

I take your points but the bank analogy would have to be altered slightly to fit here. The bank would only contain Apple currency and nothing else. What ever you walk out with would not have been there had Apple not put it there.

From Apple ][ - to new Mac Pro I've owned them all.Long on AAPL so biased"Google doesn't sell you anything, Google just sells you!"

Didn't Steve Jobs complain loud and long that one of the main things wrong with Flash was that it was proprietary, and that that is a bad thing?

Quote:

It's not open. "While Adobe's Flash products are widely available, this does not mean they are open, since they are controlled entirely by Adobe and available only from Adobe. By almost any definition, Flash is a closed system." SJ

Looks like he did.

So Apple now comes up with proprietary AirPlay instead of making iDevices far more useful to their owners by empowering them with DNLA.

I'm currently able to stream music to an unlimited number of locations throughout my house using a high-powered FM transmitter. The range is so great that my wife has tuned in my music on her car radio several blocks down the road.

Didn't Steve Jobs complain loud and long that one of the main things wrong with Flash was that it was proprietary, and that that is a bad thing?

Looks like he did.

So Apple now comes up with proprietary AirPlay instead of making iDevices far more useful to their owners by empowering them with DNLA.

Hi o isy!

You seam to be forgetting that apple is using this to connect THEIR hardware/software to other vendors devices made to be compatible with THEIR products and atv which is also theirs. People can opt for dnla standards and use other people's hardware. Can people using the net opt out of flash on a site that doesn't support anything but flash? Is apple trying to impose airplay to all other manufacturers? The answer is of course no and your analogy while seemingly valid, is really vapid.

That page on Apple's site is so blatantly misleading that it borders on false advertising.

If you read the actual text on the page, you find this:

"AirPlay wireless technology will be fully integrated into speaker docks, AV receivers, and stereo systems from companies such as Bowers & Wilkins and Denon."

Note that it says "will be", which equates to a prediction, not a statement of actual fact. Note also that even if it said "is already fully integrated ..", that the literal truth of the claim would be satisfied if AirPlay were integrated only into speaker docks, and not into any AV receivers. The picture on the Denon AV receiver on that page has no meaningful connection with reality, and as such, it borders on false representation. There is no interoperability between AirPlay and any Denon AV receiver at the present time, and no one who represents either Apple or Denon has said anything to suggest that there is any engineering effort under way to bring to the market a Denon AV receiver that is interoperable with AirPlay. Why, then, is this Denon AV receiver pictured so prominently on this page on Apple's site?

Just about three months ago I purchased a new AV receiver. I searched high and low for anything compatible with AirTunes, so that I would not have to buy and use an Airport Express as an external component. I could not find a single AV receiver that had any such compatibility. What I discovered, however, is that there are a whole lot of them that are certified DLNA compliant, and that work perfectly well with music servers that are similarly DLNA compliant.

You can of course find DLNA-compliant application software that runs on OS X, thus turning your Apple computer into a DLNA-compliant music server. But then you find yourself asking whether the hassle that you will probably encounter is justified by the money you will save on the Airport Express. If you use an iPod (or iPhone as an iPod, or iPad similarly), then you want to keep your iTunes music library, which means that you will either duplicate all the music files or else have both applications sharing the same set of music files.

The important question is this: is Apple's snub of DLNA based on sound technical reasons, or is this more of the same "Not Invented Here" mentality. DLNA began publishing guidelines and specifications for interoperability seven years ago, under the name "Digital Home Working Group". To my way of thinking, Apple should be compelled to demonstrate that there are technical problems with the DLNA specifications, and that what we are now seeing is not simply more of Steve Jobs trying to force the rest of the world to do things His Way.

You seam to be forgetting that apple is using this to connect THEIR hardware/software to other vendors devices made to be compatible with THEIR products and atv which is also theirs. People can opt for dnla standards and use other people's hardware. Can people using the net opt out of flash on a site that doesn't support anything but flash? Is apple trying to impose airplay to all other manufacturers? The answer is of course no and your analogy while seemingly valid, is really vapid.

The reasoning I see here is among the poorest reasoning that I have ever encountered. It makes about as much sense as a lump of mud. You cannot even formulate your ideas well enough to express them in a way that would make sense to anyone other than yourself.

On this site, it has become acceptable practice for people to take positions defending Apple even when the reasoning presented does not come within a country mile of any semblance of intelligent reasoning. Just meaningless, nonsensical drivel hastily assembled by people barely capable of putting together a logical argument promoting the wearing of clothes during the winter.

What you wrote is so utterly nonsensical that it makes my head hurt. Why are people like you even permitted to express an opinion at all?

The analogy between Flash and AirPlay is fully valid. Your contrived argument for trying to make it seem otherwise does not make any sense at all. The issue is interoperability between devices that deliver media and devices that receive the media and present it for people to see and hear. The pertinent question is whether the protocols that enable interoperability should be controlled by companies vs. a consortium of companies. In the case of Flash, it is one company vs. a consortium. In the case of AirPlay, it is one company vs. a consortium.

The important question is this: is Apple's snub of DLNA based on sound technical reasons, or is this more of the same "Not Invented Here" mentality. DLNA began publishing guidelines and specifications for interoperability seven years ago, under the name "Digital Home Working Group". To my way of thinking, Apple should be compelled to demonstrate that there are technical problems with the DLNA specifications, and that what we are now seeing is not simply more of Steve Jobs trying to force the rest of the world to do things His Way.

In a way, you might have answered your own question. I'd never even heard of DLNA until you mentioned it, even though it's been around for seven years. I don't think it's incumbent on Apple to explain why a standard such as this one has so little name recognition after so many years in existence. The bottom line is, it's one thing for companies to endorse a technical standard, but quite another for it be recognized by consumers as something useful and desirable. Perhaps Apple didn't want to be the dog with the flat nose, from chasing parked cars. Perhaps it's less the "not invented here" impulse so much as a desire to develop a method that actually goes somewhere.

You seam to be forgetting that apple is using this to connect THEIR hardware/software to other vendors devices made to be compatible with THEIR products and atv which is also theirs. People can opt for dnla standards and use other people's hardware. Can people using the net opt out of flash on a site that doesn't support anything but flash? Is apple trying to impose airplay to all other manufacturers? The answer is of course no and your analogy while seemingly valid, is really vapid.

People can opt not to use sites running Flash. The Lord Jobs himself hath spoken, and verily did he say unto thee - 'HTML5 shall set you free!' He has quite a different message for iOS users though - Thou shalt use iTunes and nothing but iTunes and the Store born of iTunes and the AirPlay that was begat of iTunes, for nothing but wickedness corruption and evil dwells elsewhere.

You really are a proud wearer of the iBlinkers that come with iOS not to see the absolute hypocrisy that is going on here. DLNA is an established open standard. Apple is choosing to eschew it in favour of their own closed standard, after denouncing the closed nature of Flash. That Apple makes the iOS and the devices that run on it does not lessen or excuse the hypocrisy one iota. Just another example of iGreed at work.

I think I understand the benefits of AirPlay, streaming locally in your house. However, Simplify Media use to stream in your house & to the world via the net, including music, photos & other media. Granted, at the time, it was only one way streaming from your computer. The home computer app was free & you paid $2.99 for the iPhone app.

Google bought the Simplify Media company to stream music to the Androids, & shut off the servers to the paid-for Mac streaming(Google's version of business integrity & ethics). What would prevent Google from buying Bridgeco to do the same thing again? Given history, I am surprised that Apple didn't buy this company to prevent such a happening from taking place, & maybe they tried. I would hate to see large sums of $ invested into AirPlay gadgets, only to have Google buy the company (& the intellectual property rights), which would block any hardware upgrades to match Apples' evolving technology. I'm sure Apple knows what they are doing & would leave us hanging.

If you and others commenting here would just read the original article AI linked to, it would clear up all the misapprehensions. This is NOT for extra boxes like an Airport Express box, or Sonos, or Boxee, or Roxee, or whatever. This being built into third party audio equipment. That's much better than having separate boxes, as this works directly into the audio device, eliminating possible distortion and other artifacts from several retransmissions of the data.

Unless you can back that up with actual facts - it should be pretty easy to do. Companies rarely steal code and get away with it - it's really easy to find out. The best example was when Microsoft Media Player was caught having Apple's quicktime code verbatum in there. Apple called MS on it heavily in court and used that as a wedge to get MS to commit to office development.

Insider knowledge is completely different from intellectual property by the way. And that has never been proven at all either. There have been allegations, but anybody can throw those around.

And while in the short run, Apple benifitted from that, in the long run it cost them plenty. Can you imagine what would have happened if MS software, or any software on Windows couldn't play video without jerky playback?

Seem to have and have are two very different things. If I walk out of a bank with tons of money that I did not walk in with, you can say that it seems like I robbed the place when in fact I did no such thing.

Creating a rip-off is not in of itself illegal - only a court of law can determine that and no court has done so.

There's illegal, and there's a violation of an agreement made. They can be the same, or they can be different. In Palm's case, what they did violated the agreement they had signed with the USB governing body, which is that a company is not allowed to misrepresent what the device is, which is exacly what Palm did. They were smacked down for that when they asked the body to rule against Apple.

On the other hand, RIM wrote their own software to sync into iTunes, which is what Apple has stated it the correct way to do it. Apple never bothers a company for doing that. But Palm had to be a wise guy about it, which was stupid.

Didn't Steve Jobs complain loud and long that one of the main things wrong with Flash was that it was proprietary, and that that is a bad thing?

Looks like he did.

So Apple now comes up with proprietary AirPlay instead of making iDevices far more useful to their owners by empowering them with DNLA.

Hi o isy!

Airplay is just for Apple devices. Flash is for the entire internet. If you reguired Airplay on every computer, it would be different. The chips however, are in a number of receivers now, and will be in many others shortly. Apple is simply allowing them to work with Apple's own software. But other manufactuers can use it for their own media players, or portable computing devices if they want to.

I'll bet that now that Apple is doing this, other companies will rush into it as it will give Apple and its 100 million plus devices too much of an advantage.

I'm currently able to stream music to an unlimited number of locations throughout my house using a high-powered FM transmitter. The range is so great that my wife has tuned in my music on her car radio several blocks down the road.

Does your transmitter meet the legal requirements for a low powered transmitter? This seems like a pretty bad idea in several ways. The first is that the quality will be much lower than digital transmissions, as even the standards for broadcast level quality is low by todays standards. I designed several broadcast monitoring tuners, so I'm familliar with this. Cheap transmitters simply don't meet even those standards for noise, seperation and frequency response.

So if you don't mind the low quality, and the fact that anyone can monitor what you're doing, I supose it's ok.

That page on Apple's site is so blatantly misleading that it borders on false advertising.

If you read the actual text on the page, you find this:

"AirPlay wireless technology will be fully integrated into speaker docks, AV receivers, and stereo systems from companies such as Bowers & Wilkins and Denon."

Note that it says "will be", which equates to a prediction, not a statement of actual fact. Note also that even if it said "is already fully integrated ..", that the literal truth of the claim would be satisfied if AirPlay were integrated only into speaker docks, and not into any AV receivers. The picture on the Denon AV receiver on that page has no meaningful connection with reality, and as such, it borders on false representation. There is no interoperability between AirPlay and any Denon AV receiver at the present time, and no one who represents either Apple or Denon has said anything to suggest that there is any engineering effort under way to bring to the market a Denon AV receiver that is interoperable with AirPlay. Why, then, is this Denon AV receiver pictured so prominently on this page on Apple's site?

Just about three months ago I purchased a new AV receiver. I searched high and low for anything compatible with AirTunes, so that I would not have to buy and use an Airport Express as an external component. I could not find a single AV receiver that had any such compatibility. What I discovered, however, is that there are a whole lot of them that are certified DLNA compliant, and that work perfectly well with music servers that are similarly DLNA compliant.

You can of course find DLNA-compliant application software that runs on OS X, thus turning your Apple computer into a DLNA-compliant music server. But then you find yourself asking whether the hassle that you will probably encounter is justified by the money you will save on the Airport Express. If you use an iPod (or iPhone as an iPod, or iPad similarly), then you want to keep your iTunes music library, which means that you will either duplicate all the music files or else have both applications sharing the same set of music files.

The important question is this: is Apple's snub of DLNA based on sound technical reasons, or is this more of the same "Not Invented Here" mentality. DLNA began publishing guidelines and specifications for interoperability seven years ago, under the name "Digital Home Working Group". To my way of thinking, Apple should be compelled to demonstrate that there are technical problems with the DLNA specifications, and that what we are now seeing is not simply more of Steve Jobs trying to force the rest of the world to do things His Way.

Firstly, DLNA has its own problems. It's considered to be complex to enable. Much equipment with it isn't truly compatible, or is in just a few areas. It's only recently that manufacturers have moved to it in a useful way. Standards take time, and little equipment built before a year ago has DLNA compatibility. It's a standard that's still evolving.

Apple has just made this announcement. It's also new, and I believe it will require 4.2 to work, so we have to wait for that. But I have no doubt that it will work, from what I'm reading, and that it will be available on dozens of machines before too long, and hundreds after that.

The reasoning I see here is among the poorest reasoning that I have ever encountered. It makes about as much sense as a lump of mud. You cannot even formulate your ideas well enough to express them in a way that would make sense to anyone other than yourself.

On this site, it has become acceptable practice for people to take positions defending Apple even when the reasoning presented does not come within a country mile of any semblance of intelligent reasoning. Just meaningless, nonsensical drivel hastily assembled by people barely capable of putting together a logical argument promoting the wearing of clothes during the winter.

What you wrote is so utterly nonsensical that it makes my head hurt. Why are people like you even permitted to express an opinion at all?

The analogy between Flash and AirPlay is fully valid. Your contrived argument for trying to make it seem otherwise does not make any sense at all. The issue is interoperability between devices that deliver media and devices that receive the media and present it for people to see and hear. The pertinent question is whether the protocols that enable interoperability should be controlled by companies vs. a consortium of companies. In the case of Flash, it is one company vs. a consortium. In the case of AirPlay, it is one company vs. a consortium.

Stop the insults, or you will be off the sight quickly. You assume that your own poorly thought out statements are correct, when they are not.

And Flash and Airplay are so very different in conception and purpose that anyone with half a brain can see that.

People can opt not to use sites running Flash. The Lord Jobs himself hath spoken, and verily did he say unto thee - 'HTML5 shall set you free!' He has quite a different message for iOS users though - Thou shalt use iTunes and nothing but iTunes and the Store born of iTunes and the AirPlay that was begat of iTunes, for nothing but wickedness corruption and evil dwells elsewhere.

You really are a proud wearer of the iBlinkers that come with iOS not to see the absolute hypocrisy that is going on here. DLNA is an established open standard. Apple is choosing to eschew it in favour of their own closed standard, after denouncing the closed nature of Flash. That Apple makes the iOS and the devices that run on it does not lessen or excuse the hypocrisy one iota. Just another example of iGreed at work.

Manufacturers fought DLNA for years, coming up with their own stanrards to connect their own equipment together, and only their own. It's only recently that DLNA has become somewhat accepted, as they realize that people rarely buy a system from only one company. The advantage Apple has with this, is that the chips will allow anyone to hook into them, and manufacturers are rushibg to incorporate tham into their own equipment, which means that it won't be too long before many more devices contain these chips than use DLNA.

What Apple is doing is to present a front end to this by allowing their devices to directly transmit to them, as other manufacturers will also do. But by allowing Bridge to also hook into iOS, Apple will integrate better, and more easily. Even DLNA isn't automatic. It can take some fiddling.

What you have to remember is that Apple's iOs devices are by far, the most popular way of listening to music these days on mobile devices, and many manufacturers already either offer separate docks that work with their equipment, or slots with built-in docks. This is a recognition that Apple's devices are becoming ubiquitous, and that it's a requirement to work with them. There afre far more iOs devices out there than devices with DLNA, and that will remain true for years to come.

well, it's nice not to need an Airport Express anymore with AirTunes for sending music to other rooms (you could always use an optical cable if in the same room). but this is high end stuff i'll never buy. and you still have to go back to your computer to select the tracks/lists. whereas just carrying around your iPod/iPhone and plugging it in to an iHome-type device in every room is cheaper and more flexible.

ATV2 with AirPlay actually replaces Airport Express with AirTunes at about the same price point and is much much better, because it adds video and local remote control. plus you can use your iThing in that room for this without needing to plug it in to anything. so just buy an ATV2 @ $99 for each room and connect it to whatever A/V stuff you already have there, any brand.

of course Apple could also license AirPlay to be built in to HDTV's as well, eliminating the need for an ATV set top box. we'll see ...

as to the DLNA issue ... folks, this is Apple's Walled Garden business plan. Apple gets to pick who to license AirPlay to, thereby controlling their implementation of its "ecosystem" to keep the UI "superior" - and collects a fee for each. neither of which it could do with DLNA's open standard. is this morally wrong? yeah, probably, somehow. but that's the deal. take it or leave it. that should be Apple's motto - take it or leave it. but don't whine and rent your garments about it.